Background

First, a little background on Debian. Debian GNU/Linux is a stable, free & easy-to-use operating system for all of your laptop, desktop, server & cloud systems.

It is free for anyone to use, modify and distribute without charge and is trusted by millions of people across the globe from solo backpackers to astronauts on the International Space Station, small companies to huge organizations.

Debian comes with over 51,000 packages, a package manager (APT) and other utilities that make it possible to manage thousands of computers as easily as installing a single application. It is available in over 70 languages and is fully customizable — take apart your system, replace the icons, desktop theme or anything else you can think of.

With Debian, it's possible to make your computer truly your own. Debian is built by a volunteer organization of almost 2,000 Debian Developers distributed across more than 60 countries worldwide, collaborating every day via the internet.

For more information about Debian, please visit the About Debian page.

Getting Started

As with other Linux distros, you can now download Debian GNU/Linux from the Windows Store. If this is your first time using WSL, be sure to enable the optional Windows feature before getting the Debian app by following these installation instructions.

Once you have Debian GNU/Linux installed, go ahead and launch the application. You now have your instance up and ready to go!

Thank You

We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the Debian team for all their patience, hard work & support to plan, build, and publish their distro packages in the Windows Store. Thank you! We’ll get to work on the Microsoft <3 Debian stickers 😉.

Hope you enjoy using Debian GNU/Linux on WSL!

Let us know how you use Debian GNU/Linux with WSL by submitting issues on our GitHub repo and Tweeting us at #WSL - @debian, @RobertHaist, @tara_msft, and @virtualscooley.

Actually, I think Debian GNU/Linux is somehow correct here, as (I guess) it’s exactly the same binaries as they use for the “real” Linux variant.

The Hurd and BSD variants of Debian (do they still exist?) were specifically compiled for the kernel / libc, and needed some other modifications (e. G. INIT process, boot loading etc.) compared to the Linux variant.

So, actually, it’s not a new Port of Debian, it’s just an “emulation environment” capable of running an existing port.